Advancements in computing and communication technologies have enabled significant changes in the way financial institutions, businesses, organizations, government agencies and the like operate and function. In many such organizations, institutions or agencies, electronic business documents or transactions comprise the formal and/or official form of transacting business. A large number and variety of documents and transactions are regularly exchanged between, for example, agencies and business partners, financial institutions and the private sector regardless of distance and geographic location. Many business or other transactions involve a transfer of confidential, sensitive and/or private information or data as well as comprise business transactions such as purchase orders or money transfers. For example, many such transactions involve a transfer of money, e.g., between bank accounts.
Some of these transactions may be a result of fraudulent activity. For example, a “fraudster” may use a transaction to transfer money from its rightful owner's bank account to an account maintained or owned by the fraudster. If not blocked before processing, such fraudulent transactions or transfers may cause a direct loss of money.
Identifying and/or detecting fraudulent transactions may be a complicated task, and given the high volumes, time constraints and complexity, typically involve automated and/or semi-automated fraud identification and/or detection systems coupled with some level of human surveillance. For example, analytical models implemented in software may be used to identify, detect and/or prevent fraud. Other means of detection and/or prevention of fraudulent transactions may be statistical analysis of historical data and manual surveillance. However, these means typically require substantial resources such as time, computing systems and money.
Specifically, current systems and methods are not suitable for processing very large numbers of transactions. For example, current systems and methods do not enable determining a root cause or source associated with a number of fraudulent activities.